Reviewer Wally Wood:
Wally is an editor and writer, has published three
novels, Getting Oriented:A Novel about Japan, The
Girl in the Photo an Death in a Family Business.
He obtained his MA in creative writing in 2002 from the City
University of New York and has worked with a number of authors
as a ghostwriter and collaborator.

With an extensive background in a
variety of business subjects, his credits include twenty-one
nonfiction books. He spent twenty-five years as a trade magazine
reporter and editor and has been a volunteer writing and business
teacher in state and federal prisons for more than twenty years.
He has finished his fourth novel and has translated a collection of
Japanese short stories into English.

By Wally Wood

Published on April 12, 2017

Author: Edoardo Nesi

Publisher: Other Press

ISBN: 978-159051-822-9

Author: Edoardo Nesi

Publisher: Other Press

ISBN: 978-159051-822-9

Edoardo Nesi's new novel,
Infinite Summer (translated from the Italian by Alice Kilgarriff),
takes place in Tuscany between August 1972 and August 1982, right in
the middle of the period known in Italy as the "Years of Lead,"
a period of social and political turmoil marked by left-wing and
right-wing killings and bombings. Knowing a bit of this history gives
the novel a feeling of unfolding in an alternate Italy, an Italy of
booming growth, expanding global markets for Italian goods, and
limitless possibilities.

Nesi is a translator,
writer, filmmaker, and politician. He has translated Bruce Chatwin,
Malcolm Lowry, Stephen King, and David Foster Wallace among others.
He's written a dozen books, one of which, Fughe da Fermo, was made
into a film that he directed. In 2013 he was elected to the Italian
Parliament's Chamber of Deputies.

Infinite Summer weaves
together the stories of four characters: Ivo Barrocciai, the
expansive, optimistic son of a modest Tuscan textile manufacturer;
Cesare "The Beast" Vezzosi, a small-time building
contractor; Vittorio, Cesare's young son; and Pasquale Citarella, "a
hard-working foreman and house painter from the South." In other
words, a representative of the upper, middle, and lower classes.

Ivo has a vision: Build a
textile factory on the outskirts of Florence that will be "the
envy of the Milanese." The factory must be huge, larger than any
factory in the region. It must have two stories. Ivo's own office
must be as large as a tennis court and a white Carrara marble
staircase must lead to it. As frosting on this cake, an Olympic-size
swimming pool must be built on the roof. Ivo's vision includes
Vezzosi as the contractor and Citarella as site manager. Because
Ivo's goals are so outrageous and because neither Caesare nor
Pasquale have any experience in their assigned roles, I expected the
enterprise to collapse in a heap of debt and recriminations.

But it doesn't. There are
complications, but it won't spoil the book to know that at the end
Ivo can enjoy his rooftop pool. Between the first chapter in which we
meet eight-year-old Vittorio and the last, we follow Ivo, Cesare,
Vittorio, and Pasquale change and grow, picking up insights into
Italian life and culture along the way—one of the many pleasures of
Infinite Summer.

The book is interestingly
constructed. Some chapters are virtually all description, some are
all dialogue. Some limit the point of view to a single character,
some take an omniscient point. Early in the book, Nesi takes the time
to describe in considerable detail a pickup soccer game that includes
this:

" . . .The ball—a
gnarled, rough, rubber sphere adorned with the word 'Yashin' in honor
of the great Russian goalkeeper of the 1960s whom none of the boys
had ever seen play—rises so high that Arianna [Vittorio's mother]
sees it trace an arch through the sunset burning brightly below the
low, distant hills. It's a brushstroke, a satellite, a signature that
strokes the sky . . . "

And here is Ivo,
persuading Cesare to build his beautiful factory:

" . . . Think about
it, Cesare, I'm always abroad selling, and while I'm in Germany, or
America, or Japan, or Cape Town in South Africa, my business needs
loyal, honest, tireless workers, people who care about the business
as much as I do. They're the ones who'll keep it going. I call the
shots, of course, but they're the ones who do all the work, and if
they aren't any good, if they don't give their hundred percent, if
they don't want to stay that extra hour, the company won't go
anywhere, you see?"

In one sense, Infinite
Summer is a brief for capitalism and global trade. Ivo is able to
obtain financing to build his factory, hire and motivate skilled
workers, and sell his innovative fabrics around the world. The
problems are personal; men—and women—are attracted to
inappropriate sexual partners and complications ensue. All in all, a
fascinating and convincing picture of a certain time in Italy and an
engaging and persuasive portrait of characters who were living
through it.